Magic and disease

[open_space]

A week ago, after two years of a seemingly elusive nature, I caught the bug that has had a stranglehold on the collective imagination of our species for most of two years now. I am not smart enough to take apart the sociological, political and psychological dimensions of the phenomenon, for that I'll wait to read more keen authors but today I wish to speak about Magic and disease.

First off, in good ecosophian manner, let me start by saying that I am not a doctor of any kind, heck I don't even call myself a magician just yet so this is, at best, pure speculative nonsense in the eyes of today's accepted notions and approved ideas. These are just my opinions on the subject and should not be taken seriously. None of this is meant to be taken as a means for diagnosis or information in the treatment of disease, for that please consult your trusted licensed health care provider.

With that out of the way here I mean to make some remarks on the mental notes I've had ever since I had first hand experience of what western occultists call The Astral Light and many other traditions, literally all cultures except our industrial cultures, call in one way or another The Life Force --the hidden, to modern eyes, energy that pervades everything from the farthest stars to our guts and among other things, it has an important role in health. As a matter of fact, the Japanese still use a phrase similar to "how is your chi doing?" to refer the the state of health.

So let me start with a couple of stories first. On a retreat that I went as a volunteer I had a nasty ear infection due to me nervously scratching it with dirty hands. One day I woke up and noticed the clear signs of infection and got worried. On that same day, just after my daily practices, my whole ear canal was swollen shut and I had the most painful headache that I've ever had. I felt as if my head was going to explode. I was in the middle of the Tennessee forest, so I got worried about getting medical attention and at the moment I did the only thing that I could do and thought might work.

There is a breathing component that is part of my practices that we've been taught can be used for self-healing, and I really never had the chance to try it so I figured --why not? I sat down in a particular way and held my right hand, since the infection was on the right ear, in a special gesture and started breathing and directing "prana" to my ear. I did this for about 10 minutes when I started feeling the clear sensation of reduced inflammation. In the next 5 minutes, seriously in the next 5 minutes my ear canal went from being swollen shut and me not being able to listen at all to it being completely open as if nothing had happened, well, with the exception of the signs of infection of course.

Having being raised in an industrial society I was completely and utterly shocked that I could do this, so much that I went straight and told all my fellow volunteers that the techniques we were taught actually work and still, among people that actively do this practices every day, I was met with skepticism.

The healing effect of that act lasted for about 4-5 hours until I started feeling the inflammation kicking-in again. I was not expecting to be cured by this at all, I don't know of any practice strong enough to get rid of actual bio-organisms invading your body, but it gave me enough room to actually push some antibiotic drops inside my ear and let it ventilate to avoid further suppuration .I have no idea what would've happened to me if I hadn't been able of doing that, the pain was the worst pain I've ever felt and just breathing in a particular way did more than the strongest pain-killer that I was given that day ever did.

Here is a second anecdotal evidence that the life force exists and has an important role in disease. A friend of mine has gone deep into the shamanic path. On one occasion he was having a darting pain in the kidneys, for which he got tested and got the results back saying that he had kidney stones. In an ayahuasca session, in the middle of the effect --good lord I can't imagine that-- he started having really painful symptoms and since the vine mixture makes you vomit he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. If he vomited that forceful motion could cause more damage and pain, but if he didn't he would be stuck on a bad trip.

The Taita officiating the ceremony, this guy on the bottom, noticed this, approached my friend and asked him what was wrong. My friend duly explained and the Taita's action was quite remarkable from a shamanic stance. He asked him if the medicine, that is how shamans refer to the ayahuasca mixture, was still strong in him, to which he nodded in negation. Taita Sebastian gave simple directions, to drink more and come back to him once the plant had noticeable effects on him. My friend told me that in that moment he almost fainted, but still, in an act of confidence he did and came back.



When he did, Taita asked for the location of the pain and started chanting in his language and waving a set of plants around my friend. A few moments later my friend felt something pulling from his kidneys, the pain going away and that was the end of it. He has not had issues with that ever since and it's been two years. On asking the Taita the next time he saw him he told him. "You cured me" To which Taita Sebastian replied. "No I didn't, it was her, the plant, and I don't know how it does what it does I am just the conduit".

When he told me that I was seriously impressed. One thing is to get rid of inflammation and quite another is to fix a problem of that magnitude. It only got me thinking about just how much we probably knew about medicine before, medicine that uses the life-force instead of altering the chemical balance of the body and how much of that has been lost; and how much of that would be ignored in today's society if not actively prosecuted like the ill-fated Dr. Wilhelm Reich and his orgone accumulator.

To be fair, probably some well-intended doctors would be right to doubt on this tales, there are quite a few charlatans on the alternative scene after all and quite a few of them have done immense harm out of incompetence or wishful thinking. Something is clear however, there is something potent in harnessing the life-force for healing and we used to know much more about it. If we as a society manage to bring these techniques back and fuse them with modern surgical techniques for example. Could you imagine?

As a closing note I would like to mention, for those actively practicing ceremonial magic, that stopping your practices during disease is probably a mistake. I did, at the peak of my fever, and I couldn't have regretted it more. My mood was obliterated and my bodies ability to heal seemed also greatly impaired. After I performed the LRP in invoking mode I was back on my feet. Just how much can magic and alchemy be harnessed for healing purposes is a field that definitely needs to be explored further in the opening stages of a declining civilization. Unfortunately is also one that needs a lot of preparation and guidance from magician-doctors we don't have any more, but we used to. So we need to do a lot of dumpster diving, for example the writings of Paracelsus and see what we can come up with for a future with less energy and resources.

I've seen alternative medicine starting to grow considerably, among my own friends I know someone who went from the pains of studying as an MD and then getting trained in traditional Chinese medicine. Here is to hoping!

Comments

[youngelephant]

Glad to hear you were able to fight off the bug. Kinda funny the other practitioners were skeptical. I used homeopathy and mindfulness to deal with it in late December.

[open_space]

I am glad you were successful at it! I find meditation very energizing too.

I also used homeopathy to fight the bug but I also had to use ibuprofen to take down the fever which was climbing fast so I am not quite sure how much it helped but I am sure it did, though I've had better results for other, less aggressive diseases. The whole sickness to me felt "very odd". It definitely felt like an engineered virus to me.

I was a little confused at their skepticism too, I see that a lot, people doing something but not actually believing in it. Funny how that is...

[youngelephant]

I know exactly what you mean by the sickness feeling odd. It was the weirdest experience of sickness I've every had!

[open_space]

Me too! So weird! Yuk.